NEXT TO ME (A Love Happens Novel Book 1)

by Watters, Jodi

  And just when Sam thought he couldn’t get any more pissed, his blood pressure rose another notch and his temper skyrocketed at the sight of those traumatized kids. He stopped to pull the door shut as he walked by, but knew it wouldn’t buffer the sounds anymore than Donna’s dark closet or off key singing had.

  “Hey, bro. What’s up? You here to protect me from this crazy ass bitch?” Dwayne’s voice was jovial as he nodded toward Carla, who sat crumpled on the floor in the middle of the master bedroom, openly sobbing. “Dude, she’s been straight up trippin’ on me for two hours, now.”

  “Pack a bag, bro. Grab whatever shit you need and get the fuck out of here.”

  Dwayne laughed, mistaking Sam’s seething command for a suggestion. “Now, come on, man. Why would I leave? This is my kingdom.”

  “Because if you don’t, I’m gonna break both your fucking kneecaps.”

  Dwayne’s head tipped back in surprise. “Are you for real, dude?”

  Sam continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And there’s gonna be a dozen sports reporters staked out in your front yard in an hour, happy as pigs in shit to cash in on your legendary stupidity. An anonymous insider will feed them the whole goddamn story, including how you can’t keep your skinny dick in your pants long enough to fight off the clam chowder you caught from banging one too many skank’s.”

  “You can’t do that. You work for me. Ray hired you to keep the cameras away.”

  Sam smiled at his audacity. “Do you think I’m bullshitting you? I told you a few weeks ago that you were out of rope with me. As of this morning, Scorpio rescinded their contract with Ray, effective immediately. I couldn’t give a fuck less what you do now, as long as you do it somewhere else.”

  Dwayne glanced at Grady. “Your homeboy just lost a shitload of dead presidents.”

  Sam took a step toward him. “You want a broken nose and black eyes when you give that apologetic press conference tomorrow? You know, the one where you cry like a pussy and beg the commissioner, the team owner and the fans to give a lying piece of shit like yourself another chance? If this hits the press, you lose a shitload of money yourself, homeboy.”

  “Alright, dude.” Dwayne held his hands up, carefree smile in place as he walked into the closet and grabbed his Louis Vuitton bag, already packed for away game travel. “You’re a bigger ball buster than she is.” He nodded toward Carla before following Grady out of the room.

  Taking a deep breath and wishing he was anywhere else but fucking here, Sam carefully turned toward Carla, hoping she would send him packing, too. Thinking of Ali, and her declaration that they were finished, had an annoying sense of urgency breathing down his neck, the anxiety dead weight in his gut. His day had already gone to shit and it wasn’t even noon.

  “I’m so embarrassed. What am I going to do?” Carla’s hoarse voice broke the silence.

  And Sam’s chin hit his chest. Mother. Fucker.

  He sighed, knowing blunt was best. “Carla, honey, you need to decide if you can tolerate his bullshit because Dwayne is never going to change. It’s all up to you. He’ll be back in this house before you know it, acting as if nothing happened. Think about your kids and if it’s better for them to come from a broken home or continue to live in one. Whether you really want this kind of life. If so, then good luck to you.”

  Sam’s phone rang and he quickly reached for it, hoping to see Ali’s name. Instead it was Ray, finally returning his calls. Tapping the dismiss command, Sam sent the asshole to voice mail and gave Carla one last piece of advice. “If not, call my office Monday morning. I’ll get you the name of a cutthroat lawyer who can break any pre-nup, no matter how ironclad.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The burner phone, riding shotgun in her boring, late model sedan, rang for the tenth time in as many hours. Ali stared straight ahead, her bug covered windshield reflecting the headlights of the oncoming cars. Traffic was surprisingly heavy on the well traveled interstate, considering it was close to midnight. Just crossing the border into the rugged and barren landscape of New Mexico, she’d been driving since late this morning, stopping only for gas, caffeine and red licorice twists. Trying not to spill her piping hot, truck stop coffee, thick as sludge and missing her usual dose of fat free soy milk, she reached over and cranked up the volume on her satellite radio, ignoring the ringing. Unfortunately, no amount of industrial sounding alternative rock could silence Sam’s words from earlier that day.

  It was his phrase heaping mountain of bullshit and lies that had sent her over the edge. One minute, she’d been happily surrounded by his big body and spicy masculine scent, staring into trusting silver eyes and believing him wholeheartedly when he said he would never hurt her. And the next minute, she’d heard his one-sided conversation with Grady regarding his passionate revulsion for people who lied. There was absolute truth in what Sam had professed. He would never willingly hurt her. Instead, she was the one dishing out all the pain. The timing of Grady’s call couldn’t have been better because Ali had only been a second away from blurting it all out, starting and ending with Danny, and laying her heart on the line. But the moment had passed as quickly as it came, and Ali was woman enough to admit, if only to herself, that she was far too selfish to come clean. The judgment she would surely see in Sam’s eyes would send her to her knees faster and sharper, and with a lot more pain, than Danny’s fists ever had. So instead, she’d stood there in his bedroom with only a thin sheet covering her naked body and denied it all, lying straight to his handsome, distracted face, and instead of judgment in his eyes, she’d seen confusion and disbelief, and then a whole lot of justifiable anger.

  Yes, they had a relationship. Yes, they were doing more than fucking, as he had crudely put it. And hell yes, it had been about the previous night, when he’d asked her to meet his sister and therefore, planted the glorious seed of possibility that they might have a future together. So after eavesdropping on his call, she’d made the hasty decision to end it right then and there. It was one thing to have Sam resent her because he thought she was a commitment phobic bitch. It was another to have him hate her because she was a liar.

  And he would hate her, of that she was certain.

  Ali laughed out loud at the irony. It had taken her six years to find the courage to leave a man who was manipulative and mean, but only a few weeks for her to walk away from one who was decent and good. Her heavy heart was in turmoil over it, her exhausted mind racing, and the only thing she really knew for sure was that she was one screwed up chick. And that she needed some time to breathe, to clear her head. To fix her past before she faced her future.

  And she was starting with her mama.

  Seeing Sam was unavoidable unless she locked herself in the house and bolted the shutters closed, not answering her door when he came knocking. So she’d left his house this morning and quickly packed a bag, closing her place up and pulling out of the driveway less than an hour later, knowing full well he wasn’t going to take her brush off lightly. His repeated phone calls since then proved it. The intermittent messages had gone from a simple, Ali, where are you, babe? Call me back. To an irritated, Answer your phone, Ali. Now. To his latest message, laced with anxiety and left an hour ago. Call me, Ali-cat. Please. I’m worried. Just... I won’t push. Just let me know you’re okay. Okay?

  Ali had never even intended to give him her phone number. Sam had seen her cell phone on the kitchen counter one night and grabbed it, entering himself as a contact without thinking twice. He’d then quickly tapped her into his phone, putting her on the spot when he asked for the number. The next day, when he’d surprised her with a call in the middle of the afternoon, wanting to know her stance on Thai food and horror flicks, she was glad that she had. It was a habit he’d continued and those random calls made her feel important. These calls did, too.

  Which was why, when she finally stopped at a roadside motel just outside of Albuquerque a few hours later, she called him back. Lying in the queen size bed, the cheap sheets and woo
l blanket rough against her bare legs and the neon orange vacancy sign filtering through the worn out, plaid curtains, she dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Ali? Damn it, are you okay? Where are you?” His voice was raspy, tired.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Where are you?” he said again, when she didn’t elaborate.

  She sighed into the phone, knowing she couldn’t lie to him anymore. “I’m in New Mexico. I’m going home to see my mom. I just stopped to sleep for awhile.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you answer your phone? And why the hell are you driving all the way to Chicago?” He asked the rapid fire questions as if he thought she might hang up at any moment.

  “I’m going to Oklahoma.” Her breath hitched, loud even to her ears. “I’m not from Chicago, Sam. I’m from Oklahoma.”

  He didn’t respond and Ali braced herself for his reaction. When he finally spoke his voice wasn’t angry, it was detached. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Ali? Are you really okay?”

  “No...” Huffing out an impatient sound, she shook her head. “I mean no, I’m not in trouble. And I’m trying to get to okay.”

  The silence was heavy. Finally he said, “Are you coming back?”

  Turning her head into the pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut, not sure if he was asking her if she was coming back to California or if she was coming back to him.

  Either way, she answered honestly. “I don’t know.” And when there was no response on his end, she couldn’t bear it. “Goodbye, Sam.”

  Pressing the phone off, Ali laid there in the lumpy bed of the seedy motel, the loud sounds of semi traffic from nearby Interstate Forty penetrating the thin walls and single pane window, but she didn’t hear it. All she heard was the sound of Sam’s silence.

  ***

  Windshield time. That’s what her daddy always called it. When a guy—or a gal—wanted some time to themselves and a change of scenery, or just needed some space to chew on a problem weighing down his mind, the best cure according to him, was windshield time. And as she drove along the flat plains of Oklahoma, the fields dotted with wildflowers and the pastures dusty with red dirt, Ali realized just how right he’d been. She took in the familiar countryside with interest, sweet memories of her childhood coming back to her in wonderful bits and pieces. And right alongside them, was the unpleasant memory of her last time home.

  Danny had hated Oklahoma, of course. Ali had only come home once during her entire time with him, early in their relationship, when she had been blindly in love and proud to have him meet her parents. He hadn’t taken two steps out of the airport doors before he’d pompously declared the entire state as low-brow Shitsville. It wasn’t nearly as civilized, as sophisticated, as he was. And during the entire visit, he had bitched incessantly about the constant dust, the arid heat, and the uneducated hick’s that had chosen to live in this God forsaken place. His words, not hers, and it was one of many things that made Ali question what she could’ve possibly seen in him. They were two people from vastly different worlds and it was a fluke they had ever crossed paths in the first place, during her senior year at NYU. A few friends had convinced her to go to a party at some unknown yuppie’s apartment in Tribeca and then unceremoniously ditched her in favor of the recreational drugs laid out like a buffet on the bathroom counter. Sitting outside on the historical building’s cold limestone steps, she’d been huddled inside her cableknit sweater, counting the paltry amount of cash in her purse as she waited for a cab she couldn’t afford to show up, when the door opened behind her. She glanced up to see a classically handsome guy with a practiced smile, sandy brown hair and a gold pinkie ring. Ali should have turned tail and run at the sight of that pinkie ring. But instead, when he’d pointed to his camel colored, wool coat that likely cost more than her monthly rent and charmingly told her Bloomingdale’s made a similar option in her size, she’d smiled at the clever comment, too bewitched by his slick haircut and even slicker words to notice the snobbish undertone. They’d spent the next several hours in the corner coffee shop down the block, Danny telling her about his new position as an associate lawyer in a prominent law firm uptown, and about the four bedroom, single-family home he’d recently purchased in the highly sought after, affluent town of Greenwich, Connecticut.

  And how he’d been searching for a girl just like her his whole life.

  Ali had fallen head over heels for his suave sales pitch, thinking she’d found her one true love. When he had proposed three months later, with a dozen red roses and a two-carat solitaire that was bigger and more beautiful than any piece of jewelry Ali had ever seen outside of the JC Penney catalog, she’d counted herself one of the lucky people and thanked God for it everyday.

  No matter how many times Ali racked her brain, she couldn’t recall a single clue during those first three months, not one red flag, that he had violent tendencies. Or any other tendencies that had shown themselves later on. But Danny was a master at hiding his real self and he had fooled her but good. And, as he’d told her many times during their marriage, it wasn’t as if he had ever actually beaten her up. For some sick reason, he was aware that throwing an all out beatdown on her was going too far and the fact that he was able to reign himself in helped to clean his conscience, she supposed. Smart man that he was, his favorite moves tended to be a sharp punch to her ribcage, because the bruising was easy to hide, or a quick bitchslap, most effective when Ali least expected it and therefore, couldn’t brace herself. She could count on two hands the number of times Danny had hit her in the six years they’d been married and according to him, if you did the math and averaged it out, it didn’t add up to all that much. To Ali, of course, it was ten times too many and she’d been planning to leave him long before the certified letter from an estate lawyer had arrived, on a snowy Tuesday the week before Thanksgiving. An elderly and childless—and apparently, wealthy—great aunt on her father’s side had recently passed away. Ali’s life had changed that day, as anyone’s would if given the same bounty, but what she hadn’t realized at the time was that it would literally save her life, as well.

  Before that month was over, she had opened a secret bank account with a mind boggling balance that would allow her to divorce Danny without financial worry and start the new year fresh, putting the nightmare of her marriage behind her. She’d made a calculated mistake, though. One Danny made sure she never forgot.

  It was only a few weeks later when, early in December, they’d attended his firm’s annual black tie holiday party, looking the very picture of a perfect couple. Danny worked the room with his smooth wit and false charm, while Ali made small talk with the other lowly wives, quickly growing tired of their materialistic chatter and watching the clock until Danny thought it appropriate for them to leave. Had to keep up appearances, he’d said, but a headache had Ali searching for him early in the evening, checking the lobby and conference rooms first before heading down the long corridor lined with executive office suites. Finding his prestigious corner office door ajar, she pushed it open, whispering his name softly. And there was Danny, standing in front of his polished mahogany desk with his perfectly tailored tuxedo pants around his ankles and a junior associate kneeling in front of him, head bobbing like there was no tomorrow.

  Ali was shocked at Danny’s brazenness and embarrassed by the graphic sexual display before her, but she wasn’t surprised. In fact, it explained much of his puzzling and disturbing behavior, of his internal struggle that somehow manifested itself into domestic violence. Her mouth snapped closed and she immediately turned around, walking back to the party without saying a word or making the scene that some would expect a wife to do after catching her cheating husband in the act. A half hour later, Danny returned to her side, calm and composed, as if what she’d seen had been a figment of her imagination. Neither said a word on the awkward ride home, but Ali’s mind reeled. The key to her freedom was in hand and considering the scene in his office, surely Danny didn’t wan
t to be married to her anymore than she to him.

  After the hour long drive to Greenwich, she said as much once they walked into their sparkling white kitchen. “Danny, how long have you felt this way? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  Calmly removing his monogrammed cufflinks and setting them on the marble counter, he raised his brow at her sudden question. “Tell you what, dollface?”

  As if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “You don’t have to hide it, to me or anyone else. You should live your life openly, as you were meant to. And I’m not mad, either. But we need to talk about this. Air out the details.”

  “I think you may have gotten some bad aspirin. How many pills did you take?”

  “Danny, don’t play dumb or try to deny it. I saw you. I know that you’re—” The last word never made it past her lips. His punch was lightning quick, the hard pop to her mouth shocking her, sending her backwards, her black Jimmy Choo heels no match for the slippery porcelain floor as she lost her balance. Trying to brace her fall, she landed hard on her backside, her elbow hitting the tile with a sickening crack as blood filled her mouth.